Hosted Nodes User Guide

Sybil Technologies runs a Kinode hosting service for users who do not want to run a node themselves. These hosted Kinodes are useful for both end users and developers. This guide is largely targeted at developers who want to develop Kinode applications using their hosted Kinode. End users may also find the Managing Your Kinode section useful.

Here, ssh is used extensively. This guide is specifically tailored to sshs use for the Kinode hosting service. A more expansive guide can be found here.

Managing Your Kinode

Valet is the interface for managing your hosted node. We plan to open-source the hosting code so there will be other hosting options in the future. Once logged in, Your Kinodes will be displayed: clicking on the name of a Kinode will navigate to the homepage for that Kinode. Clicking on the gear icon will open a modal with some information about the Kinode. Click Show advanced details to reveal information for accessing your Kinode's terminal.

Accessing Your Kinode's Terminal

As discussed in Managing Your Kinode, navigate to:

https://valet.uncentered.systems
Your Kinodes
Gear icon
Show advanced details

In the advanced details, note the SSH Address and SSH Password.

To access your Kinode remote instance, open a terminal and

ssh <SSH Address>

where <SSH Address> should be replaced with the one from your Valet advanced details. You will be prompted for a password: copy-paste the SSH Password.

You should now have a different terminal prompt, indicating you have sshd into the remote instance hosting your Kinode.

Using SSH keys

Rather than typing in a password to create a SSH connection, you can use a keypair.

Using `kit` With Your Hosted Node

kit interacts with a Kinode through the Kinode's HTTP RPC. However, Kinode limits HTTP RPC access to localhost — remote requests are rejected. The local limit is a security measure, since the HTTP RPC allows injection of arbitrary messages with "root" capabilities.

To use kit with a hosted node, you need to create a SSH tunnel, which maps a port on your local machine to a port on the Kinode's remote host. HTTP requests routed to that local port will then appear to the remote host as originating from its localhost.

It is recommended to use kit connect to create and destroy a SSH tunnel. Otherwise, you can also follow the instructions below to do it yourself.

Create a SSH tunnel like so (again, replacing assumed values with those in your advanced details):

ssh -L 9090:localhost:<HTTP port> <SSH address>

e.g.,

ssh -L 9090:localhost:8099 [email protected]

or, if you've added your host to your ~/.ssh/config,

ssh -L 9090:localhost:<HTTP port> <Host>

You should see a ssh session open. While this session is open, kit requests sent to 9090 will be routed to the remote Kinode, e.g.,

kit s foo -p 9090

will function the same as for a locally-hosted Kinode.

Closing the ssh connections with Ctrl+D or typing exit will close the tunnel.